Feb 11, 2015: Fifteen years ago, I tried teaching developers and videographers about the mechanics of story structure in London. These British stalwarts on the tech side piled into an office after-hours and sucked up that tenth cuppa. Fish-eyed, they were bludgeoned with “story” after eight hours of coding. Whereas a 20th century Writers Room consisted only of writers, the 21st century Writers Room involves a multiplicity of players from different disciplines. It wasn’t easy. Moreover, that process didn’t quite work. If it takes years for playwrights to learn how to craft a full-length piece, it’ll require more than a few off-the-track lessons for developers to spin drama. But I sensed then what I know now. As story and code blend to an ever greater degree, the need for a common language amongst storytellers, designers, technologists and makers becomes a necessity. How to drill down on the Internet era’s collaborative creative process and distill a new lexicon and design methods poses the challenge. ENTER SHERLOCK AND THE INTERNET OF THINGS IN 2015 Lance Weiler, founder of the Digital Storytelling Lab at Columbia University and pioneering filmmaker, and Nick Fortugna, co-founder of Come Out & Play and game designer, are hosting a yearlong experiment that’ll lead to some type of collaborative project. The prototype of this project will be performed in the 53rd New York Film Festival (October 2015) at Lincoln Center. The partners of Sherlock and the Internet of Things include the Digital Storytelling Lab at Columbia University, NYFF Convergence and the Brown Institute for Media Innovation. In his 2014 article “The Art of Narrative Deduction” in Filmmaker Magazine,...